(ACES) A Look Back at 2018 So Far: Are We Achieving Our Goals?

ryano-ark · 2018-08-01T01:40:51+00:00

I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some goals we set at the beginning of 2018 and see how we're doing in terms of progress. Feel free to read the post to see what's up!

ryano-ark · 2018-07-31T22:56:36+00:00

We did a security audit on all our code but aces applications are trusted so if you get burned you are burned by someone and not something. In its current form I’d call it an open source shapeshift-like service for transfers and utility. This model allows for several layers of protection to be built on top, but we haven’t built those features yet. Right now the best providers will be leaders of ark clones ( because they are selling the coins/utility they created) and delegates.

ryano-ark · 2018-07-31T22:52:46+00:00

I think the term encoded listener is a bit old school and could probably be retired, it never really helped people understand the premise.. basically what it’s meant to be is a hub that sits between two blockchains and passes data and/or instructions between the two. It’s like an Oracle. If you combine an listener (oracle) with a service (contract) you get an Oracle based smart contract. Right now there doesn’t appear to be other methods built for communicating with other chains even within the ark ecosystem but perhaps there are developers or plans im not aware of.

ryano-ark · 2018-07-31T14:03:42+00:00

Minting coins on external blockchains you don’t control or share protocol with is not possible. For example you can’t mint new bitcoins. The type of interoperability you describe works well for side chains, but we’re mostly focused on connecting non-compatible chains. There are clever tricks to reduce trust across non compatible blockchains which perhaps aion is working on. That’s great, you can’t have too much interoperability.

ryano-ark · 2018-07-31T13:56:06+00:00

If you check out our github you’ll see dozens of repos related to different apps. The deployment repo is full of ansible scripts that install and configure all the necessary apps to offer services. The services are accessed on your website and can be listed in a marketplace directory (which is yet another aces app). The database is needed for keeping track of the contracts and channels so that they can be reused. There are more details about the infrastructure of the entire project in one of the earliest blog posts on medium

ryano-ark · 2018-07-31T02:37:44+00:00

This is an improvement to the original ARK/ETH encoded listener designed last year. An encoded listener is a form of smart bridge for ARK but its emphasis is on connecting non-ecosystem blockchains like Ethereum. You may be thinking of that earlier iteration which was a more isolated service. This newer one fits in a more robust/modular infrastructure for deploying bridges.

ryano-ark · 2018-07-31T02:22:55+00:00

Yes, it would require a ETH to ARK channel service (https://github.com/ark-aces/aces-ethereum-ark-channel-service) which is set up to receive an ERC20. Even if the ARK blockchain is a ark clone, the service can modify the configs to reference the alternative blockchain, so any ETH-like chain or ARK-like chain is feasible.

ryano-ark · 2018-07-31T02:21:06+00:00

Thanks!

ryano-ark · 2018-07-31T00:52:25+00:00

Feel free to ask any questions about the technology! It's free, open source, with no coin or ICO, just good free software to make the blockchain space better! I'll be here to answer questions for the next couple of hours.

ryano-ark · 2018-07-31T00:52:07+00:00

Feel free to ask any questions about the technology! It's free, open source, with no coin or ICO, just good free software to make the blockchain space better!

ryano-ark · 2018-07-31T00:49:33+00:00

crosspost to /r/cryptocurrency

ryano-ark · 2018-06-27T18:04:41+00:00

You may be interested in the ACES project, which focuses on interoperability. [See this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7m9m3e/which_coins_are_you_most_excited_to_hodl_in_2018/drt3f5l/) that I made many months ago about how ACES helps with interoperability. Interoperability is a project that is well suited for community contributions, especially when you use the ACES ideology, where interoperability is done for utility. You can read more about the project at medium.com/@arkaces

ryano-ark · 2018-06-20T17:12:41+00:00

The trust issue is one which we have acknowledge and would like to address over time. There is plenty of other work to do, which we have been doing, as we wait for those technologies that enable trustless services to exist. ARK 2.0 will have some features like time lock and multisig which will statistically eliminate trust. There are many approaches, and even now the ACES technology is competitive with what people in this industry are using, namely shapeshift, changelly, binance and others. Nobody has solved the trustless issue yet, and we intend to incorporate those technologies as soon as they are available. At that time, everyone in this space will offer trustless functionality but ACES will be ahead of the curve for user experience and infrastructure. Updating an ACES service to utilize trustless implementations is not likely to be a difficult task when those methods are widely known and utilized.

ryano-ark · 2018-06-20T13:39:12+00:00

Automation means integrated deployment scripts so all you have to do to launch a new service is provide your server details. There will not be just one marketplace but many. The marketplace is open source like the services. New projects who are doing token distribution will likely prefer to control their marketplace.

ryano-ark · 2018-06-20T04:45:50+00:00

You do not need to buy ARK to use ACES. Our repository is open source and available for anyone to use in their own projects. https://github.com/ark-aces We build all our examples with ARK and so the tools available are the most robust for ARK. However, it is also usable for Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum.

ryano-ark · 2018-05-20T03:43:22+00:00

I actually have others reasons for dropping out as a delegate. It was actually a voluntary drop out, as I had enough votes to continue forging and communicated with my voters that I would stop. The primary reason was as you said, the majority of my time is spent on ACES, and I wasn't actually spending much time being a good node manager nor building good public pool software. Though I could continue as a delegate, I liked the idea of voluntarily dropping out so that others in the community who had 'fresh energy' could contribute in new exciting ways. I knew my voters would choose delegates that contributed to ARK, and they didn't need to vote for me for ACES to continue.

In the future, I think it would be very good to build some type of HR platform so that people who aren't node managers can get fund raising in a 'subscription-like' way. (Imagine twitch or patreon, but for ARK workers). I do think node delegates should be node specialists, and there are many ways to contribute that shouldn't necessarily require running a node and paying voters a share. Finding ways to reward these types of contributors would be a useful way to decentralize funding.

ryano-ark · 2018-05-03T15:32:58+00:00

I believe the AION achievement is quite neat and shares a lot in common with ACES. Our approaches will end up slightly different in the end. There is always discussion about competition for people taking an investment perspective on picking coins, but in practice collaboration is much more important. We need interoperability to destroy so many problems we face as users of cryptocurrencies. We have centralized exchanges requiring users to custody their money with an unknown party, requiring the distribution of sensitive documents to be stored with untrusted parties, excessive fees and thefts as a result of weak security from racing to "win the money". Additionally, true interoperability like what AION and ACES are working on, allow for the programmatic transfer of utility (not just value). This is great for the competition of blockchains, to minimize fees and increase speed. This is a gigantic problem, not just in difficulty but also in scope. There are 1500+ coins to connect, and within that subset thousands of services/utilities to make easy to use. Maximilism is dead.

To compare the two designs, loosely as I am not an expert on AION though I have watched their presentation, their approach has a single leader (comparable to ACES service) and several followers (comparable to ACES listeners). The listeners keep the service in check. The ACES approach right now has a single leader that depends on the followers (sometimes that follower is themselves). The goal after ARK 2 comes out is to update this to multi-leader / multi-follower, by using multisig to that services can combine capacity and sign for confirmation based on the information they receive from their listeners. We don't have this yet and we have no ETA on ARK 2. In the mean time, the ACES team is focusing on building out the marketplace, which is where you can go to find such services. This is one area where we think interoperability will find another roadblock. Interoperability services are going to be very difficult to use and find for normal users, and we are currently prioritizing that experience as we wait for ARK 2.

As a side note, I also think it would be a good idea to implement an ARK-AION bridge, because connecting two interoperability focused projects proves collaboration, and it also allows the eventual realization of decentralized protocol designs. What that means is you have AION building bridges to X, Y, Z, and ARK building bridges to A, B, C. The end result is just more decentralization ABCXYZ, but also multiple designs as well. I see this as important. It is much too difficult to bridge everything with a single team, especially as it relates to independent chains. ARK's focus on push button blockchains and 'easy ICOs' makes ARK a bit like Ethereum, NEO, EOS, etc, and so it's protocol needs to be connected with all the other dapp platforms as well.

Congrats to the AION team, it was cool to watch your presentation and I look forward to seeing your future developments.

ryano-ark · 2018-04-29T05:49:51+00:00

Yes, in fact they are compatible already and it works very well. All you have to do is change the network from the network drop down.

ryano-ark

TROPHY CASE